Two alumni form music service site

Music sharing site provides all users with 'connected platform'

By: JULIE LEUNG

Posted: 4/8/08

As one of the top Google hits for "quotes about the future" says, to predict the future, you have to invent it.

Two University alumni have launched what they deem the next generation music platform, through which users can connect to their music anywhere.

Over drinks one night at The Winery, Greg Shrader, 31, and Clarkson Logan, 36, decided to solve the music industry's ailments.

"It's almost a perfect storm of a situation: Usage sucks now. Consumers are being sued. The labels are confused and artists are frustrated," Shrader said. "Somebody has to come forth and say here is a platform that will satisfy everybody's needs."

Behold Maestro.fm, an application and online community that allows users to listen and share their music without illegally downloading.

Launched on March 20, Maestro.fm offers users access to their music library and other users' playlists from any Internet-linked computer.

"The whole idea really was this: Can I access my music anywhere without bringing it with me? - not burning CDs, not syncing to my iPod and not bringing my laptop," Logan said.

According to Logan and Shrader, this is how Maestro.fm works:

Maestro.fm has a downloadable application that reads the content information of your chosen music and transfers it to your account. This is not uploading music, only scanning the information and making it available online. If the MP3 were a finger, this is like a fingerprint.

Afterward, once you play your songs on Maestro, the songs stay on Maestro and can be streamed on other computers. Maestro.fm's platform is unique, allowing users to share music, but not download. Because the platform is new, the jury is still out on whether or not this technology will be targeted by the RIAA in the future.

Through album or mixed playlists you create from the "uploaded" songs, you can make the playlists private, accessible to only friends, or public. A test run of the site demonstrated one doesn't need to be a member of Maestro to access massive amounts of public playlists.

With music quality comparable to iTunes and an option to purchase songs from Amazon.com, Maestro.fm is more than just a gargantuan online playlist. It fosters a community by tracking listening habits, suggesting other artists and providing reviews, discographies and lyrics.

Though the company still has some quirks to figure out (like how to sort out misspellings of band names from becoming listed as separate artists), Shrader and Logan are ready to tackle the world.

"You got to start a company wanting to take over the market, you may or may not get to, but you have to want to," Shrader said. "We want to do this better than Apple, better than Facebook."

And with a Mac version rolling out within the next few weeks, Shrader and Logan are only looking forward.

"We visualize a world that is very different from today, so we're trying to build a product that will satisfy this future world," Shrader said. "There is going to be a world after iTunes, there is going to be a world after CDs, there's going to be a big change and … it's got to be a connected music platform."